[d3v0 lifeblog]

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He kind of had a problem, or rather, he had the idea of an idea that would be a problem to have, about geometry.

What do you call the palm that rubs the magic lamp? Is it a pawn? Does the hand feel anything as it is raised to start to rub the lamp and raise the Genie?

The problem wasn't geometry, although he was fine at geometry, the problem was what you could do with the reverse of geometry, which was also geometry, if you could sort of scale up down and scale
it up at the same time and in the right way, and with glue.

He pondered this and wonder who else was itching with the same kind of problem, and if they called it itching. The brain can't itch apparently, so where did they feel it when their brain did itch, did they feel it behind the knee?

The problem was really about what you could do with glue, if you could also do things with geometry. The problem was with things made of geometry.

He wondered if people thought they had rock-grinder-brains that would take intractable material and polish it smooth until it could flow like water, about what sort of analogy they would use.

When you talk about things made of geometry, really, you are talking about things made by machines, which is to say, machines themselves.

Now machines are just machines, they made be made with a purpose, but really the purpose comes from person who sets them in motion.

Now the danger with ideas about idea is application, or really ideology about application, which is kind of like when someone doesn't like your idea about how to do something, and then doesn't like you because of your idea that you thought of, idly.

He wondered about what various ideologies might make of the idea his idea could make, and he didn't like were that went, which is probably into small dark rooms that registered with the trace human pheromones of fear, and dispare.

The idea that the idea applied to was really how you might accomplish one of the ideas of making things in the fast approaching new wave of how to make things.

This wave was the next logical step, like a man walking down a hill who wants to get to the bottom. You kind of get started and then things take their course without you thinking too much about it.

Humans who are into logic, or driven by it, tend to take logical ideas to their conclusion.

Man made the tools that made the tools that made the machines that make the machines that make the things; with many more machines that make the things assembling themselves being the new bit.

Wasn't there some thing he wondered, about politics, about the people and the machines of production? About ownership, about one owning the other? He wondered dimly. But does it inform us about each person having a machine of production, did it talk about that in some important way?

University courses skipped, hard to pick what is relevant down the track. But the idea of the idea in his mind was present, and it was troublesome.

To say it was troublesome was really to say that it was about how to reverse engineer trouble out of the things that the machines that could make things could by the people who owned them, and by what that mean for the people who owned the people, so to speak.

He dimly recalled an article about statics, and early computing, and gaming border to smuggle drugs.
But that was kind of obvious, and it didn't really have much insidiouseness infused in it, didn't really have much reverse engineering, just a new application.

The idea was really a meta idea about how to solve the idea about how to get something made by people who thought they where doing something else.

There is straight out tricking people, but that isn't insideous, that is the domain of con men and fly by night tricksters.

Every good lie is wrapped around a kernel of truth, so a good lie about making things needs to be wrapped around some true things.

We are about to have a lot of things, and thing making things, progressing from the unusual 1980's dot matrix printer to the full duplex colour laser, but not with paper, not just with images, but with our ability to make things themselves.

The idea of the idea wasn't about the things you could make, but it was about how to solve the paradox of making two things at once, some thing that was what its maker wanted it to be but was also what the influencer of the maker wanted to be as well.

We like to call that a paradox, or at least some of us humans do, but if you are an engineer then you just call that a design constraint and put it into the brain along with all the other highly intractable materials; it will get ground around until it flows like water, given time.

I've been learning two dance routines for the weekend just past. This partnered routine I started learning about a dozen weeks ago, progressively learning it in class a few moves at a time. There are some subtle height, pulse and footwork changes that keep the routine looking interesting, but each different kind of thing stretches out the time it takes to learn things.

Here is a slow walk through of the whole routine without music from the teachers.

Here is a link to the PAX list of top indie games of 2012. The swapper looks pretty fun, as does offspring fling.
PAX 10 Indie Games
I'm still keen to play Monaco, mentioned years ago, but it still isn't out yet!!

I ran in the Melbourne half marathon today with 7,000 other runners, a very big field! It was a well run event, but with about 26,000 runners in all categories, was a big event. Add in all the supporters and the it is kind of the size of a big music concert.

Today I set a new personal best of 1:47:11. I am very happy with that. Due to various over hydration issues I started towards the back of the field and had to dodge traffic for about 20 kms. I also needed a 1 minute toilet stop at about the 15km stage. These clearly aren't the impediments they might appear to be.

I was literally killing the field on the downhill sections of the course, probably due to my Wellington running experiences, passing about a person a second. These Melbourne people just do not know about hills at all. At about the 18km mark I felt super good and ran a couple of very fast kilometres there I suspect.

ms_little_sister bet me by a large, large margin, but more importantly didn't break herself doing the event and is happy to do more running, which pleases me a lot. She can do some more running and use it as a hedge against her stressful job and industry.

My girlfriend also ran a great first event 10km, but wonders if she should have run harder on the day.

I feel for her because it is difficult not to want to shave off the seconds by micro optimising your performance somehow, or by telling yourself that you weren't in fact trying hard enough, beating yourself up by picking through degrees.

My counter to these feelings about not trying hard enough was when I passed a spritely runner from my running group at about the 18km mark. I said "hey how are you doing" and "its not far now" to him on the way past, but he was stony faced and was literally running with out his usual spring.

This guy was new to the half marathon, but in training up to about 14km's he pretty much owned me by a few minutes, so it isn't like the guy isn't fit or fast, he is both.

The guy must have gone too fast at some point in the course, so fast that he had to slow down and recover*. I happened to be near him at that point. I suspect that he did recover a kilometre later and probably went on to finish with a really good time.

However that guy will be kicking himself for not having enough self control to go out at the right pace. He really wasn't a happy camper at the point I passed him, his head was forward, his shoulders stooped, he was running without much spring, he wasn't lifting his heels, and he wasn't really open to my attempts at encouragement. Poor guy, I'm sure that I'll be him one day.

It seems that if you didn't have a burn out you wonder if you should have gone harder, but that if you do have a burn out you know that you should have gone slower.

This kind of wondering is almost entirely missing the point of your success! It is some hubris about your own potential that misses the wider picture by focussing on the details.

The wider picture is a rosy, glowing, effusive story about very positive personal behaviour and achievement.

Think how successful you were in training! Did you have 20 training runs? Was it more? Did you cover hundreds of kilometres? That is a really long way!

How good is your cardio fitness right now? Has it been better at any time in the last six months? I doubt it, you are probably at a hight point right now. Good cardio fitness by the way helps your sex life, both in quality and quantity.

Did you shrink or grow this winter? Even if you didn't shrink you are probably in much better shape, you'll have more lean muscle with all your training, I believe that is completely unavoidable. Are your tight jeans not so tight? Go trying them on.

Compare your fitness right now to the average fitness of people in your country. You probably ran your event almost non-stop, perhaps a short walk at a drink stop. Can the average person run 10km at any pace non-stop? The answer is no, no they cannot.

They cannot match your achievement today of running 10km (or further) because they are were not physically capable** of that large feat today, they did not choose to prepare their bodies in the preceding months, they did not get up early today, they did not line up at the start line in the dark and cold and the certainly were not trying as hard as you were running this morning when they were asleep or eating breakfast.

You chose to achieve things today that most people never choose to do and you did them well. Put down the tyranny of the clock and be happy!

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* I'm guessing here but this is the most likely cause. He was super amped before the event and wanting to "kill it". Possibly he did not drink enough water, which is actually quite important over a half marathon because you'll loose 2 litres at least. He might have had the wrong breakfast with the wrong glycemic index and had his blood sugar bottom out. He also might have sustained an injury that I couldn't see, it was a cold day and people were off the course stretching calves and quads unhappily.

** Australia and New Zealand are obesity countries, please help the average.

This Monash University page has a great quote, "In Australia more than 17 million Australians are overweight or obese."

It is half marathon time of year again. This year I'm participating in Run Melbourne with about 4,000 others in the my half marathon category, and about 20,000 others overall.

ms_little_sister is included in this list of participants, her first half marathon. In the likely event that she finishes it will mean that I've run in half marathon's with both my sisters, which will be an achievement mostly lost on my non-running parents.

I'm 10 days out and pondering the minutes per kilometre maths again, like all half marathoners do. How has my training gone? What time might I run? Might I run a good time?

You start wondering about if you could shave a 5 seconds per kilometre off your time. Sounds easy right? Just five little seconds? Couldn't I move from the 5:15 k pace to the 5:10 k pace? Isn't a few seconds just about wanting it enough?

Pace per Km

Race Time

04:45

1

40

14

04:50

1

42

59

04:55

1

44

45

05:00

1

46

30

05:05

1

47

16

05:10

1

49

01

05:15

1

51

47

05:20

1

53

32

05:25

1

54

18

05:30

1

56

03

To be honest I've never run as fast as 5:10, but will run somewhere between there and 5:25 most likely. Faster in the dry, with less wind and depending on how much the crowd gets in the way.

Really the goal is to get fitter and a little bit leaner once a year with the self imposed improvement tyranny as a kind self distracting side game.

I'm in limbo at the moment waiting for a verbal offer to turn into a contract from a government department. They said it would take a week which I interpreted to take at least a week.

This duration has just passed so now I'm wondering how long I let them yank my chain before I call back an interview I turned down with another company. Hmm. Tricky stuff. I have a lack of data points about Melbourne contracting to make sense of this properly yet.

I guess I'll give it whole three business days of unanswered queries from my recruiter and then I'll call them bust and chase something else.

Like others before it, Facebook will probably fall in the next 4 years. It might not, which would make it the exception to the rule, but we'll see. This stuff is notoriously hard to pick, Rupert Murdoch squandered US $400 million picking myspace as the next big thing and was wrong.

There is a bit of curious positive melodrama playing out here, over the next two weeks. The web comic Order Of The Stick has been running a drive for about a week so far to get its old comics reprinted and available for purchase and doing wonderfully, stupidly, pleasingly well. Monstering it, if you'll excuse the pun.

Order Of The Stick is a webcomic drawn with stick figures about following a Dungeons and Dragons (3rd edition) party through there quest. It is geeky and funny cleverness.

I suspect that the success of the kickstarter drive is that this is a way for this certain kind of geek to express themselves through commerce, to stick it to the other geeks and projects on kickstarter.

We'll see, but I wonder if how far past half a million dollars the pledge might get? The guy running it has had a big challenge coming up with additional bonus prizes as his graph of donations and purchases have charted unpredictably through the roof!

I've always wanted to solve a Rubik's cube, and after picking up a 2nd hand one in a junk store at the weekend for $8 I did that just a half hour ago :) I followed instructions, and of the ones available I liked these ones the best, by far.

It was a bit faffy, but if you set aside a couple of quiet hours two days in a row then I think it is achievable by anybody who can stick it out.

Ideally the instructions would take you about ten minutes, but the thing is you have to learn to read each step correctly and to not make any mistakes in the sequences. Most of the sequences are ten moves or less, quite achievable, only a couple are long.